Vanquisher
Origins Born into a hardworking blue-collar family in rural Arizona, Clara Everly was the last person anyone expected to become a scientist. As a child, she was always happier outside, connecting with nature than inside reading books. She willingly helped out with the family’s small farm, and was a vital and enthusiastic member of her local community. In her early teens, however, her beloved father passed away from the cancer he had hidden from his family for years, and it broke the family apart. Her mother became a depressive and an alcoholic, and her older brother and sister both moved out of the state, unable to cope with what had happened to their parents. Realising that she needed to help, Clara resolved to get a well-paying job that would help support the farm, and turned to the library. Every spare moment she could find in the day between school and looking after her mother, she spent poring over textbooks and research notes, developing a thorough understanding of physics and achieving high qualifications in the subject at school, setting her up perfectly for a job with EvoDyne Applied Sciences, a major research company based in Phoenix, just a few miles away from her family home. She took on a role as a research assistant in the particle physics laboratory, and used the majority of her paycheck to keep up rent and bill payments on the family home. She was even able to use the corporate benefits to send her mother to rehab and counselling sessions, and things began to look up for both Clara and the family. The Arizona Incident On January 10, 1973 everything changed. On what seemed like a normal day, Clara headed into the lab and started setting up for the day's experiments. She and the team were working on the development of an experimental particle reactor in the hopes that it could provide a source of clean, renewable energy, and their tests so far had been promising. However, a missed safety check resulted in a faulty connection within the reactor. This triggered a chain reaction which resulted in the device malfunctioning and causing a catastrophic explosion which destroyed the lab, killing everyone inside and levelling half of the nearby city of Phoenix. Thousands of people lost their lives in the explosion, which would come to be known as the Arizona Incident. This particular curse came with a blessing, however. While the accident claimed many lives and destroyed vast swathes of property and infrastructure, there was one survivor located in the epicentre of the blast: Clara Everly. Seemingly unharmed by the explosion, Clara quickly discovered that her physiology had been completely transformed by the unknown energies emitted from the reactor when it exploded. She found that she had complete mental control over the particles both in her body and in the surrounding area, and upon clambering out of the wreckage she immediately submitted herself to rigorous scientific testing. The scans, probes and other similarly invasive tests showed that not only was she perfectly healthy, she had become potentially the most powerful superhuman on the planet. Retaining the values and outlook instilled in her during her upbringing, Clara realised that she was given these abilities to help people, and her first act once the scientific testing had been completed was to dedicate herself to rebuilding the city of Phoenix. She used her abilities to shape the city to the exact specifications of the world's greatest architects, and the newly-restored city was renamed Rebirth, hailed as the visionary city of the future. The Singularity A few years after the Arizona Incident, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Rebirth City Hall, the festivities were interrupted by a message broadcast across the planet by a being calling himself Razer. A powerful-looking alien clad in black armour, Razer demanded that the 'Singularity' be brought to him, otherwise he would burn the planet to ash in his search for it. Government officials and scientists attempted to identify the nature of this 'Singularity' without success, and exactly 24 hours after his broadcast Razer stepped out of a portal into the centre of a MacOne Laboratories '''facility dedicated to researching renewable energy sources, and with a wave of his hand he pulled the entire building down, causing it to collapse in on itself. He launched a second broadcast to the world and once again demanded that the Singularity be brought to him, and this time identified it as a power source that had recently appeared on Earth. As she heard this broadcast, Clara realised that she was the Singularity that Razer was referring to, and resolved to face him alone. She flew to the centre of the '''Mojave Desert, ensuring that the location was so remote that nobody else would be hurt, and shouted Razer's name at the top of her lungs, her voice booming out into the atmosphere and summoning the alien attacker, who emerged out of a portal in front of her. Razer opened the chestplate of his armour and revealed a miniature black hole at the core of his being, one which constantly hungered for energy. Clara began to feel sympathy for him until he told her that he had drained the energy from dozens of worlds in the wider cosmos, killing billions of people simply to keep himself alive. He demanded that she submit in the hopes that her seemingly limitless energy would finally satiate his hunger, threatening that if she refused, he would drain the energy from the core of the Earth and destroy it from the inside out. Clara submitted, allowing him to feed on her and watching as he seemed to grow stronger. The energy being transferred was so intense that the heat radiating from the two of them turned the sand underfoot to glass, and yet Razer still wasn't satisfied. He snarled that he would drain her and then drain the world as well, and she decided to change her strategy: instead of passively allowing him to feed, she poured the limitless energy that made up her physical form directly into the black hole, watching as his form began to overload with energy. She sensed a disruption in the area, and knowing that he couldn't take much more of an input she grabbed him and flew him into the upper atmosphere, where he exploded in a ball of white-hot energy, glowing so brightly that it seemed like a new star in the sky. Vanquisher Clara returned to Earth after defeating Razer, and was hailed as a hero. Amidst the celebrations, Clara realised that she was a beacon now, a signal beckoning hostile forces to descend on the Earth, and she knew the responsibility that position required of her. So she decided that she would be a protector, a guardian of the world against any outside forces that threatened the planet or its people, a hero. She took on the moniker of Vanquisher '''after the media declared her the 'Vanquisher of Evil', and became the world's greatest superhero. Quickly becoming beloved around the world, Vanquisher was a hero in actions and deeds as well as outlook, dedicating the same amount of focus on small problems as she did on global, world-threatening events. Her abilities allowed her to do incredible things, and she only ever used them for the good of mankind, whether that was catching a satellite as it fell out of orbit, or rescuing a little girl's beloved pet dog from getting run over by a car. She did everything with a warm smile and a compassionate attitude, and was able to help thousands of people each day as her abilities meant that she did not need to sleep. But the perfect woman naturally gathers some enemies over time, and in particular the immortal '''Primarch, a powerful woman who has built up a vast sphere of influence in the centuries she has been alive, and the villainous group she commands and calls The Trust, comprising a rogue's gallery of the worst villains on the face of the planet. These villains have attempted to take Vanquisher down on countless occasions through a variety of insidious methods, but none of their attempts have proved successful. Solo Heroics In February 1987, a scientist formerly aligned with the team that became The Futurists named Dr Jonathan Drazen returned to Earth from the dark dimension he had been trapped in known as The Void with an army of shapeless dark creatures at his beck and call. The creatures swarmed over the Earth, hungry and with a desire to devour everything in their path. Vanquisher led the charge against these dark creatures, and although she was able to carve a path through the horde, ultimately they were too great in number for her and the assembled heroes around the world to hold back alone. The assault was only stopped when the Futurists sacrificed themselves to drag Dr Drazen and the Void creatures back through the tear in reality they had emerged from, sealing the heroes away in a dark dimension of cold black nothingness. The world mourned their loss but Vanquisher vowed to continue their good work in protecting the planet from otherworldly threats. But some threats came from closer to home, and in 1992 Vanquisher became aware of a group of Evohumans who were being aggressively pursued by UNION and their force of Unifiers. Led by a powerful psychic Evohuman who called himself Phrenic, the fugitives were being hunted because UNION forces believed they could be dangerous and wanted to bring them in to protective custody. The Evohumans saw this as an act of aggression and fled, trying to avoid a confrontation that was ultimately forced when The Union were sent in. This confrontation resulted in a skirmish which threatened a small town in the north of England, and ultimately Vanquisher was called on to intervene and put a stop to the fighting. She managed to broker a truce between the two sides, and even acted as an intermediary in the subsequent discussions in which UNION granted the Evohumans sanctuary on Scepta Isle off the coast of Scotland in exchange for an agreement to never initiate conflict with the human race. Vanquisher remained a confidante of Phrenic, and frequently visited Scepta Isle to check in on the Evohumans. The Eternity Pursuit On December 31, 1999 an unidentified object resonating with cosmic energy materialised in the exact centre of the Sahara Desert. An area of desert a mile in diameter turned to glass with the heat of the matter transfer, and the object hovered a few feet off the floor, not moving or reacting to the environment. Dozens of different contingents raced to be the first to reach the object with a variety of different motivations, but the first person to arrive on the scene was Victor Geist, CEO of Geist Industries. A ruthless businessman and highly intelligent scientist, Geist was the first to pick up any trace of the object and managed to reach it before anyone else, placing his hand on the object just as UNION's force of Unifiers arrived on the scene. Geist discovered that the object was a seemingly unremarkable metal helmet, however when he placed it on his head he was struck with near-infinite cosmic knowledge. The helmet was an ancient artifact known to the wider universe as the Eternity Helm, forged in the fires that birthed the universe and previously worn by a powerful cosmic entity known as The Great Titan. The Helm showed Geist everything, and in that vision he saw the end of all things, and formed a plan to save the universe. The artifact also granted him immense power, and he was able to fight off the assembled soldiers and heroes who had come to confront him over the object with ease. He escaped to his base of operations underneath the Adirondack Mountains and left the heroes, including Vanquisher licking their wounds as they realised this was potentially the greatest threat the Earth had ever faced. Geist next emerged at the North Pole, where he began constructing a device which would convert the entire planet into an entity of pure consciousness, destroying the physical matter and transporting everything to a higher plane of existence where it would be safe from the coming catastrophe. Vanquisher led the charge to face Geist, along with the technologically-enhanced hero Steel Saviour and the powerful magic users Hart 'and 'Sole, who enacted a ritual which punched a tiny hole in the fabric of reality and pulled the ancient and lost hero Pantheon back into their world from beyond the Veil. Although Geist was able to fend off their initial attacks, the heroes resolved to work together and were ultimately victorious, destroying the machine and removing the Eternity Helm from Geist's head. The villain was imprisoned and Pantheon hid the Eternity Helm away so that nobody could be tempted to use it in the future. The Ascendancy In the aftermath of the Eternity Pursuit, Vanquisher realised that greater heroes emerging across the Earth would only spawn greater villains and threats, and appropriate measures needed to be put into place to defend against them. Along with Steel Saviour and Pantheon, Vanquisher assembled a team of powerful superhumans whose duty would be to protect the Earth from the greatest threats that would face it, and The Ascendancy was born. The team relocated to The Nexus, a purpose-built base of operations from which they were able to respond to global and universal threats instantly, and set about trying to make the world a better place. Vanquisher acted as the figurehead for the group, but in reality the tactical operations undertaken by the team were coordinated by Steel Saviour, and each mission was approached in a unique way to best utilise the varied skills and abilities of the different members of the team. As she didn't require sleep, food or drink to survive, Vanquisher was frequently more active than her teammates, and her sheer power allowed her to carry out dangerous missions alone, so she continued to act as a hero around the clock and across the globe while also working with the rest of the Ascendancy to handle bigger and more dangerous threats. Bedlam In 2009 the Ascendancy were called in to face down a superhuman terrorist calling himself Bedlam, who had been responsible for a string of chaos-inducing attacks across the city of Starkweather. He had already defeated the entirety of The Union, a government-funded superhero team and torn through the ranks of UNION's peacekeeping forces with apparent ease. When the team attacked, they discovered that he had the ability to grow stronger when surrounded by chaos, and with the mayhem that had broken out after his attacks he now possessed levels of strength that could rival Vanquisher's own. In fact, he was able to incapacitate each member of the Ascendancy including Vanquisher, whom he knocked out with a lucky but well-placed blow. Bedlam was ultimately taken down by a Cerberus Unit, a group of three heavily-armed and well-trained soldiers working for the deep-black division of UNION known as HADES. These soldiers and the organisation that had trained them were praised by the public and the government alike, and people became aware of the fallibility of the people they held up as heroes. HADES Wary of trusting such a secretive organisation, the Ascendancy arranged an off-record meeting with representatives of various global superhero groups in a pocket reality known as the Null Dimension where their conversations could not be monitored. They came to an agreement that HADES needed to be investigated further, and Vanquisher recruited former covert operatives turned superheroes Longsight '''and '''Scattershot to go undercover and infiltrate the organisation. Before they were able to report back, however, the two heroes disappeared and all records of their undercover employment with HADES and UNION as a whole were expunged. Although the superhuman community were never able to definitively prove that the two heroes were murdered by HADES operatives, it nonetheless drove a deep wedge between the heroes and UNION. Vanquisher was racked with guilt over her involvement in their operations and disappearance, and the defensive strategy of the Ascendancy became a lot shakier as she lost confidence in her role. The Cortex Crisis With their relationship with the superhuman community weakened, UNION strategists began planning alternate solutions for combating extraordinary threats, and building new alliances with other organisations. As MacOne Enterprises '''cut ties with UNION over their involvement with HADES, a new collaboration with Geist Industries was formed, and it was a Geist scientist by the name of '''Dr Karl Morgan who came up with a new human-led strategy for global defense. An advanced threat-detecting artificial intelligence named Cortex was built, with the intention being that it would be able to identify threats and coordinate responses in a fraction of the time it would take a team of analysts. However, the technology used to build Cortex was developed as part of an off-book arrangement with the imprisoned Victor Geist, who secretly built in a rewrite of its core programming. This caused it to kill its developers the moment it was activated, and isolate itself from any kind of network to prevent it being deactivated remotely. Now sentient, Cortex began to systematically crippled UNION's security systems, culminating in a mass breakout from the high-tech maximum security prison known as The Vault, where it hoped to free its 'father' Victor Geist from his incarceration. The Ascendancy intervened and managed to contain the escapees, but were attacked and incapacitated by Cortex, which had built itself a robot body and used its knowledge of their weaknesses to attack and subdue the entire team. It then teleported away with the unconscious bodies of many heroes including Vanquisher and fellow team member Construct, and began to enact the final stages of its plan. Cortex intended to build itself a new, organic superhuman body using the genetic templates of the heroes it had captured, and use its new abilities to enact the plan Victor Geist had intended to use at the close of the Eternity Pursuit. However, as the body was finished and Cortex uploaded its consciousness into it, Vanquisher managed to escape from her bindings and fly the rogue AI into the upper atmosphere before dropping it back down to Earth. The battle was won as Steel Saviour, now simply going by the codename Saviour, enacted his Hail Mary and brought the lost superhero team known as The Futurists back from the realm they had been stranded in, and together the assembled heroes managed to defeat Cortex and wipe every trace of its programming from the internet. Rebuilding UNION In the wake of the Cortex Crisis, Vanquisher was a key figure in confronting UNION Director Marcus Cage about HADES and Bedlam, and Cage gladly enacted the Clean Sweep Protocol, a complex web of legal clauses that he had built into his agreements with Professor Soren Magnussen, the head of the HADES division which allowed him to shutter the whole division and dissolve all ongoing projects. HADES was no more, and Cage promised to rebuild UNION from the ground up, and as part of this arrangement he also cut ties with Geist Industries and forged a new partnership with MacOne Enterprises. Vanquisher agreed to act in an advisory capacity for UNION, making sure that Cage was aware when he came close to crossing any dangerous lines, and although she maintained a valid skepticism, she knew that it would be for the good of humanity. She still operates in this capacity as well as being a key member of the Ascendancy to this day, and the planet is better off for her continued presence and vigilance. Personality Selfless, noble, heroic: these are all words that accurately describe Clara Everly, who prioritises the safety of intelligent life above all things and is dedicated to doing everything in her power to maintain it. She has been kind and compassionate ever since she was a child, caring for others and putting their health and wellbeing above her own, taking on multiple jobs and additional schoolwork to help support her family even when there were others who should have been doing it themselves. Her teens saw a love of science blossom within her, and her work as part of EvoDyne Applied Sciences was the centre of her world, allowing her to engage with a subject she was passionate about while also raising money to help her family and keep them safe. After the Arizona Incident and the emergence of her superhuman abilities, she felt guilty over her part in an event which caused a loss of life on such a vast scale, and redoubled her efforts to atone and protect people, playing a key role in rebuilding the city of Phoenix and embracing her destiny as a superhero. As Vanquisher, she is all too aware of the corrupting influence that power can have, and she makes a daily effort to remind herself that she is there in service of the people, regardless of how much more powerful she is than them. With the vast abilities gifted to her, she has a huge responsibility to never use them for dark or malicious purposes, and she tries to do good every day. The reverse of this means that if anything bad happens on her watch, she feels immense guilt for being unable to stop it, and her overwhelming compassion and empathy can be considered her greatest weakness. Superhuman Abilities Since her exposure to extra-dimensional radiation during the explosion at EvoDyne Applied Sciences, Vanquisher has possessed complete control over the particles in her own body and the surrounding area. This grants her a wide range of superhuman abilities, including: * Physical Attributes '''- As she can control the particles that make up her own body, Vanquisher can change the physical makeup of her form at will, allowing her to utilise vast superhuman strength, speed and agility simply by shifting particles. There seems to be no upper limit to the strength and speed she is able to use with this aspect of her powers, but she tends to hold back for fear of injuring innocents around her. * '''Flight - By mentally manipulating the particles in her body and commanding them to move up, Vanquisher is able to defy gravity and fly through the air at incredible speed. * Energy Projection - By increasing the vibration and friction between particles in the air around her, Vanquisher is able to generate vast quantities of energy and project it in a variety of different forms. She can project concussive blasts from her eyes and hands, create a protective radius of energy around herself and other, and shoot destructive beams of energy from her body. As with her physical attributes there seems to be no upper limit to the amount of energy she can generate, but again she chooses to impose limitations on herself for the good of those around her. * Invulnerability - With complete control over every particle in her body, Vanquisher is instinctively immune to physical damage, able to either condense the particles to absorb impact or disperse them and allow physical objects to pass through her entirely. She has more difficulty defending against magical or non-physical attacks, but still retains a high level of durability against this kind of attack. She is also able to survive underwater and in the vacuum of space as she doesn't need to sleep, eat, drink or even breathe to stay alive and active. This only scratches the surface of Vanquisher's full range of abilities, as the only limitation to what she can do by controlling particles is her own imagination. Weapons and Equipment With the vast range of superhuman abilities that Vanquisher possesses, she doesn't need or want to carry any weapons with her.